Economic Efficiency and Its Determinants: A Case Study of Cowpea Production in the Western Agricultural Zone of Nasarawa State, Nigeria

Most farmers in Nigeria, cowpea farmers inclusive, practice subsistence farming with low productivity and consequent inefficiencies. Cowpea related researches have however, focused more on the technical efficiency and the enterprise profitability with little or no research on economic efficiencies, particularly in the study area. It is consequent upon this gap that this study estimated the economic efficiency level and assessed the influencing factors among cowpea farmers in the western agricultural zone of Nasarawa state, Nigeria. A sample size of 160 cowpea farmers was selected using multi-stage sampling technique. The data used was collected for the 2017 farming season using structured questionnaire and was analysed using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and tobit regression model. The study revealed that cowpea farmers in the study area operated on a small scale, at an average of 1.0 ha/farmer. Findings also indicated that, the mean technical (TE), allocative (AE) and economic efficiencies (EE) were: 0.31, 0.18 and 0.06 respectively. The implication of these results is that an average farmer in the study area has the scope for increasing TE by 69% in the short run under the existing technology. An average farmer in the study area also has the scope of increasing their allocative and economic efficiencies by 82% and 94% respectively in the short run under the existing technology. The economic efficiency was only influenced significantly by the farm size. Education, farming experience, and extension visits were not significant determinants of the economic efficiency. The study recommends for policies of government at all levels and those of all the stakeholders to discourage land fragmentation and promote efforts that encourage farmers to form strong cooperatives so that they can pool their resources together to increase their scale of operations and by so doing improve their cowpea production efficiency.